"Can't act; slightly bald; can dance a little"

That was one hapless MGM employee’s report on Fred Astaire’s first screen test back in the 30s. Which is right up there with Newsweek’s review of The Beatles when they first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show 60 years ago today:

“Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair.  Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody.  Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!”) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments.”

As for their future, “The big question in the music business at the moment is: will the Beatles last?  The odds are that, in the words of another era, they’re too hot not to cool down, and a cooled-down Beatle is hard to picture.  It is also hard to imagine any other field in which they could apply their talents, and so the odds are that they will fade away, as most adults confidently predict.”

Not to be outdone, another old fogey chimed in from the west coast:

Los Angeles Times

Feb. 11, 1964

With their bizarre shrubbery, the Beatles are obviously a press agent’s dream combo. Not even their mothers would claim that they sing well. But the hirsute thickets they affect make them rememberable, and they project a certain kittenish charm which drives the immature, shall we say, ape.

More reviews of that seminal performance can be found in this Salon article.

We Fountain boyz watched the show that evening, and, although we didn’t squeal and shriek like girls, we were still impressed. The year before, “Hey, Paula (I want to marry you)”, was the best selling song of 1963 — it was dreadful even to this 10-year-old’s ears, and after the arrival of the Beatles and, shortly thereafter, the rest of the British invasion, its like would never be heard again.